'Dump Trump': Tens of thousands join global march

'Dump Trump': Tens of thousands join global march
Demonstrators arrive on the National Mall in Washington, DC, for the 'Women's March on Washington' on January 21, 2017 (AFP Photo/Andrew CABALLERO-REYNOLDS)

March for Science protesters hit the streets worldwide

March for Science protesters hit the streets worldwide
Thousands of people in Australia and New Zealand on Saturday kicked off the March for Science, the first of more than 500 marches around the globe in support of scienceThousands of people in Australia and New Zealand on Saturday kicked off the March for Science, the first of more than 500 marches around the globe in support of science

Bernie Sanders and the Movement Where the People Found Their Voice

"A Summary" – Apr 2, 2011 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Religion, Shift of Human Consciousness, 2012, Intelligent/Benevolent Design, EU, South America, 5 Currencies, Water Cycle (Heat up, Mini Ice Ace, Oceans, Fish, Earthquakes ..), Middle East, Internet, Israel, Dictators, Palestine, US, Japan (Quake/Tsunami Disasters , People, Society ...), Nuclear Power Revealed, Hydro Power, Geothermal Power, Moon, Financial Institutes (Recession, Realign integrity values ..) , China, North Korea, Global Unity,..... etc.) -

“ … Here is another one. A change in what Human nature will allow for government. "Careful, Kryon, don't talk about politics. You'll get in trouble." I won't get in trouble. I'm going to tell you to watch for leadership that cares about you. "You mean politics is going to change?" It already has. It's beginning. Watch for it. You're going to see a total phase-out of old energy dictatorships eventually. The potential is that you're going to see that before 2013.

They're going to fall over, you know, because the energy of the population will not sustain an old energy leader ..."
"Update on Current Events" – Jul 23, 2011 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) - (Subjects: The Humanization of God, Gaia, Shift of Human Consciousness, 2012, Benevolent Design, Financial Institutes (Recession, System to Change ...), Water Cycle (Heat up, Mini Ice Ace, Oceans, Fish, Earthquakes ..), Nuclear Power Revealed, Geothermal Power, Hydro Power, Drinking Water from Seawater, No need for Oil as Much, Middle East in Peace, Persia/Iran Uprising, Muhammad, Israel, DNA, Two Dictators to fall soon, Africa, China, (Old) Souls, Species to go, Whales to Humans, Global Unity,..... etc.)
(Subjects: Who/What is Kryon ?, Egypt Uprising, Iran/Persia Uprising, Peace in Middle East without Israel actively involved, Muhammad, "Conceptual" Youth Revolution, "Conceptual" Managed Business, Internet, Social Media, News Media, Google, Bankers, Global Unity,..... etc.)


Hong Kong's grandpa protesters speak softly but carry a stick

Hong Kong's grandpa protesters speak softly but carry a stick
'Grandpa Wong' is a regular sight at Hong Kong's street battles (AFP Photo/VIVEK PRAKASH)
.
A student holds a sign reading "Don't shoot, listen!!!" during a protest
on June 17, 2013 in Brasilia (AFP, Evaristo)

FIFA scandal engulfs Blatter and Platini

FIFA scandal engulfs Blatter and Platini
FIFA President Sepp Blatter (L) shakes hands with UEFA president Michel Platini after being re-elected following a vote in Zurich on May 29, 2015 (AFP Photo/Michael Buholzer)
"The Recalibration of Awareness – Apr 20/21, 2012 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Old Energy, Recalibration Lectures, God / Creator, Religions/Spiritual systems (Catholic Church, Priests/Nun’s, Worship, John Paul Pope, Women in the Church otherwise church will go, Current Pope won’t do it), Middle East, Jews, Governments will change (Internet, Media, Democracies, Dictators, North Korea, Nations voted at once), Integrity (Businesses, Tobacco Companies, Bankers/ Financial Institutes, Pharmaceutical company to collapse), Illuminati (Started in Greece, with Shipping, Financial markets, Stock markets, Pharmaceutical money (fund to build Africa, to develop)), Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Women, Masters to/already come back, Global Unity.... etc.) - (Text version)

… The Shift in Human Nature

You're starting to see integrity change. Awareness recalibrates integrity, and the Human Being who would sit there and take advantage of another Human Being in an old energy would never do it in a new energy. The reason? It will become intuitive, so this is a shift in Human Nature as well, for in the past you have assumed that people take advantage of people first and integrity comes later. That's just ordinary Human nature.

In the past, Human nature expressed within governments worked like this: If you were stronger than the other one, you simply conquered them. If you were strong, it was an invitation to conquer. If you were weak, it was an invitation to be conquered. No one even thought about it. It was the way of things. The bigger you could have your armies, the better they would do when you sent them out to conquer. That's not how you think today. Did you notice?

Any country that thinks this way today will not survive, for humanity has discovered that the world goes far better by putting things together instead of tearing them apart. The new energy puts the weak and strong together in ways that make sense and that have integrity. Take a look at what happened to some of the businesses in this great land (USA). Up to 30 years ago, when you started realizing some of them didn't have integrity, you eliminated them. What happened to the tobacco companies when you realized they were knowingly addicting your children? Today, they still sell their products to less-aware countries, but that will also change.

What did you do a few years ago when you realized that your bankers were actually selling you homes that they knew you couldn't pay for later? They were walking away, smiling greedily, not thinking about the heartbreak that was to follow when a life's dream would be lost. Dear American, you are in a recession. However, this is like when you prune a tree and cut back the branches. When the tree grows back, you've got control and the branches will grow bigger and stronger than they were before, without the greed factor. Then, if you don't like the way it grows back, you'll prune it again! I tell you this because awareness is now in control of big money. It's right before your eyes, what you're doing. But fear often rules. …

Wall Street's 'Fearless Girl' statue to stay until 2018

Wall Street's 'Fearless Girl' statue to stay until 2018
The " Fearless Girl " statue on Wall Street is seen by many as a defiant symbol of women's rights under the new administration of President Donald Trump (AFP Photo/ TIMOTHY A. CLARY)



“… The Fall of Many - Seen It Yet?

You are going to see more and more personal secrets being revealed about persons in high places of popularity or government. It will seem like an epidemic of non-integrity! But what is happening is exactly what we have been teaching. The new energy has light that will expose the darkness of things that are not commensurate with integrity. They have always been there, and they were kept from being seen by many who keep secrets in the dark. Seen the change yet?

In order to get to a more stable future, you will have to go through gyrations of dark and light. What this means is that the dark is going to be revealed and push back at you. It will eventually lose. We told you this. That's what you're here for is to help those around you who don't see an escape from the past. They didn't get their nuclear war, but everything else is going into the dumper anyway. … “

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Sunday, December 1, 2013

Japan's yakuza mobsters becoming 'Goldman Sachs with guns'

Google – AFP, Hiroshi Hiyama (AFP), 1 December 2013

Japanese mobsters driving flash cars purchased with bank loans. Executives
 bowing in apology for loaning millions to those underworld figures. Japan Inc. is
engulfed in its worst mob scandal in years. (AFP/File, Ishara S.Kodikara)

Tokyo — Japanese mobsters driving flash cars purchased with bank loans. Executives bowing in apology for loaning millions to those underworld figures. And high-level officials vowing to squash the crime syndicates, known as yakuza.

Japan Inc. is engulfed in its worst mob scandal in years and it's shining a rare light on the links between big business and shadowy organised crime groups usually known for low-brow ventures like extortion and loan sharking.

But with membership falling as police ratchet up a crackdown, experts say the yakuza are branching far outside their traditional business into everything from insider trading to funding business startups.

Yasuhiro Sato, president of Mizuho Financial
 Group, bows his head at a press conference
in Tokyo on October 8, 2013 after Mizuho 
was told off by regulators for lending money
to gangsters (Jiji Press/AFP, Jiji Press)
"Insider trading has become huge -- you can make much more money manipulating stocks" than extorting businesses, says Jake Adelstein, a crime writer whose bestselling memoir "Tokyo Vice" is set to become a Hollywood movie.

Adelstein, a former reporter at Japan's top-selling Yomiuri daily, likens the Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan's biggest organised crime group, to "Goldman Sachs with guns".

Tattoos and missing pinkies

Many mobsters -- forever associated with full-body tattoos and lopped-off pinky fingers -- have now ditched that tough guy persona in favour of tailored suits and clean-cut look that could pass in any boardroom, Adelstein said.

"They're savvy investors," he said added. "They like to gamble."

The yakuza occupy a grey area in Japan's usually law-abiding society.

They are both feared and loathed as social outcasts, while they're revered in equal measure through film, fanzines and manga cartoons.

Like the Italian mafia or Chinese triads, the yakuza engage in activities ranging from gambling, drugs, and prostitution to loan sharking, protection rackets and other illegal ventures often run through front companies.

But unlike their foreign counterparts, yakuza are legal groups with offices in major Japanese cities, and they have historically been tolerated by authorities, although there are periodic clampdowns on some of their less savoury activities.


A 53-year-old former yakuza gangster
shows off his silicone-made finger on 
May 27, 2013 during a visit to prosthetics
 specialist Shintaro Hayashi's office
in Tokyo (AFP, Toshifumi Kitamura)
In fact, the Yamaguchi-gumi helped dole out food after a major quake in the western city of Kobe in 1995.

'Sophisticated methods'

But Tokyo is now under intense pressure from abroad to clamp down on yakuza and their money laundering, as the US Treasury Department works to freeze the overseas assets of top Japanese crime groups which it says make "billions of dollars annually in illicit proceeds".

The crackdown at home has intensified after Mizuho Bank said in September that it had loaned money to organised crime members, an admission subsequently repeated by at least four other major lenders including Japan's biggest bank, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group.

Sometimes loans were legitimately used by gangsters to buy foreign sports cars or other expensive items, while in other cases the vehicle was quickly sold on the black market with the loan never paid back.

The scandal at Mizuho worsened after it initially said top executives knew nothing about the loans, only to backtrack on that claim as a company-commissioned report blasted its laissez-faire compliance.

Mizuho later said more than 50 executives would be punished with its chief executive foregoing pay for six months.

A retired Japanese yakuza crime boss
 shows the tattoo on his back featuring a
 carp swimming up a waterfall, at his
 home in Tokyo on March 20, 2009
(AFP/File, Frank Zeller)
But the latest admissions are not a first for the country's banks, a big source of concern among police wary of sharing details of investigations with mob-linked firms, experts say.

"It is baffling that Mizuho board members failed to act," said Toshihiko Kubo, professor of financial law at Ritsumeikan University.

"Once they learned that loan recipients were related to the mob, they should have taken immediate action."

Major lenders are routinely approached by those with links to organised crime looking to raise money, said an anti-yakuza campaigner in Tokyo, echoing calls from Finance Minister Taro Aso, among others, to tighten banking rules.

"Crime syndicates...are out to make money, and they'll use whatever means available," said the campaigner, who asked not to be identified.

"Many companies are trying not to deal with organised crime...But It's difficult to filter everything because their methods are also becoming sophisticated."

Earlier this year, the Japan Securities Dealers Association launched a database to help keep those with mob links out of the country's now-sizzling stock market.

The pressure on Tokyo to clean up the problem is set to intensify as Japan looks to host the 2020 Summer Olympics.

Kenichi Shinoda, boss of Japan's largest 
yakuza gang, the Yamaguchi-gumi, gets
 into a car on April 9, 2011 after his
 release from a Tokyo prison (Jiji Press/
AFP, Jiji Press)
On paper, the police crackdown appears headed in the right direction with yakuza membership down by about 28 percent to 63,000 in 2012 from a decade ago, according to police data.

Mob links run deep

Still, yakuza links run deep in Japan and some credit their tough presence for keeping street crime low.

Their place is so deeply rooted that senior politicians are sometimes found to have mob ties, including ex-Justice Minister Keishu Tanaka who resigned last year following reports of his association with mobsters.

"There are lots of politicians that, in some sense, owe their positions to yakuza support back in old days, so clearly their influence is not non-existent," Adelstein says.

"It's still a bizarre system because Japan's organised crime groups are legal entities. They are regulated but not banned."

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